A Pan American Airlines ticket for Margarita Lora, who left Cuba as part of Operation Pedro Pan in August 14, 1961.

A Pan American Airlines ticket for Margarita Lora, who left Cuba as part of Operation Pedro Pan in August 14, 1961.

Operation Pedro Pan was a program that airlifted over 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children from Havana to the United States between 1960 and 1962. After the Cuban Revolution, some Cuban parents feared for their children's futures under the new Communist regime. They entrusted the Catholic Church, aid societies, and the US State Department to connect their children with awaiting relatives and friends in the United States. Some were cared for by the Catholic Welfare Bureau and placed in temporary shelters in Miami before being relocated to foster families in thirty different states until the families could be reunited. This Pan American passenger ticket was used by eight-year-old Margarita Lora when she left Cuba for Miami, Florida on August 14, 1961, as part of Operation Pedro Pan. The passenger name on the ticket is Elia M. Prats Martinez, Lora’s name before marriage. (The M stands for Margarita.) She ended up in foster care for four years with her sister and two brothers, in Syracuse, New York, until her parents arrived in the US in 1965.